The collection of my illustrations and designs here is primarily intended for publishers and art agents. Busy as these folks are, I urge them to first drop by atmy Quick Look and the current New Work pages.

Because this is a showcase for my abilities, styles and range, and because part of my work include art and design instruction, I have populated the pages mostly with concept art, studies and imagined projects, such as art I would have liked to have done while working on conventional commercial assignments.

While I have freely borrowed company brands, book and magazine titles, and public and copyrighted images for models, I own my creative work and unless specified, it remains illustrative, educational and unavailable for commercial purposes.

This site also redirects from barzel.ca.You may contact me through the form in my Contact page, but if you don't hear from me, use avbarzel@gmail.com.

A Quick About Blurb..

I’ve studied art and design as an apprentice and as an art school student, both inCanada and for a short time, as a child, in Europe, eventually majoringas an undergrad in Western and Jewish history. I have taught in and written on brick and stone masonry technology, worked in law enforcement and continue tovolunteer in a security team.

I work mostly as a freelance graphic designer, art director and a technical writer, but my passion and goal is illustration, which this portfolio is about.

I approach all my creative projects as a seasoned professional, with focus on timelydelivery, quality and transparency of process. I follow Canadian and American industry standards and norms and strive for integrity and honesty with myself and with those I work with.

I live in Toronto, Canada with my family and work from home and a rural "hide-away" studio in central Ontario.

Thank you all for your time and wishing all health,wealth and happiness,

Blessings and b'shalom,

Avi Barzel, Toronto

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I'm not a big fan of the current trends in "minimalism," which with the exception of some genuinely excellent work, tends to the clumsy and sterile. I'm by nature an academic traditionalist with a bias for the vintage past, but I do have a taste and admiration for exceptional cutting-edge art, whose development I follow. As a digital artist I have been inspired and owe a debt of gratitude to the work of people like Bill Domonkos, Max McNeil, Jeff Wilt, Mark Lundquist, Madika Iwabuchi and Hikaru Mochizuki, Nicholas Wittenberg, and of course, Miika Saksi, among many others. Along with the contemporaneous gems I continue to come across, the work which fired up my imagination and spurred me to add Photoshop, Corel Paint and other digital media to my pencils, oils and brushes is Daniel Donnelly's inimitable 1998 book, Cutting Edge Web Design: The Next Generation, by Rockport Publishers of Gloucester, Massachusetts. A big thank you to all.